Empire: Total War review - experience thread

[Vympel]

Fuck Steam is retarded. Bought my copy of it today, and the fucking thing installs through Steam completely - the damn thing doesn't even give you the option as to which hard drive you want to install it to.

Install takes over half an hour too. It's 15 gigs.

[weemadando]

Fuck Steam is retarded. Bought my copy of it today, and the fucking thing installs through Steam completely - the damn thing doesn't even give you the option as to which hard drive you want to install it to.

Install takes over half an hour too. It's 15 gigs.

Tell me about it. I downloaded it and had to buy extra bandwidth so as to not put myself over my limits.

[MKSheppard]

So I see Steam is still a steam(ing) pile of shit.

[Minischoles]

Fuck Steam is retarded. Bought my copy of it today, and the fucking thing installs through Steam completely - the damn thing doesn't even give you the option as to which hard drive you want to install it to.

Install takes over half an hour too. It's 15 gigs.

15 GIGS! holy crap i know modern PCs have larger hard drives but thats a damn lot to DL off of Steam.

[Gandalf]

Is the code still full of stuff from Rome?

[weemadando]

OK, played the battlefield tutes and a few quick battles to get a feel for that as I haven't played a TW since Rome and BI.

The enemy combat AI seems a lot more active. More interested in pursuing an agenda (take out those cannons for example) than dealing with every threat on it's priority checklist. No obvious exploitable behaviour or anything.

Naval combat is stupid hard. So much micromanagement. Whoever bitched about tacking being taken out hasn't had a 12 v 12 ship-fight. You seriously have to hand-hold every ship to even have a chance. I can see a lot of auto-resolves in my future.

Combat looks beautiful though. There's nothing like watching a hail of rockets, quicklime mortars and shrapnel shot tearing your enemy to pieces.

[weemadando]

Additionally - combat is DEADLY this time around. If you fuck up, the first you know about it is when you just lost 3 units of Elite Black Watch to concetrated fire from some skirmishers you'd missed. Unlike previous TW games where you can see the enemy coming and have time to react.

Don't get attached to units in this. A single good arty hit will take out a whole one. A few shots of canister will pulp a massed charge. Be prepared to take massive casualties. Truly disproportionate to anything you've experienced in a TW game before - unless you played with Kensai in Shogun.

[Pint0 Xtreme]

In the demo, the first few times I attempted the naval battle of Lagos resulted in furious micromanagement of every single ship to get the maneuvers I wanted. About the 3rd or 4th time playing, I decided to try using the line formation to hopefully ease up the micro and it did for all intents and purposes. Every now and then the formation would fuck up but, for the most part, all the ships kept in line and I was able to blast away at the enemy ships with ease. Well, that was only a 6v7 ship battle. My question is in a 12 v 12 ship fight, do the formations suddenly lose utility?

And as for tacking being taken out of the game (unless I'm not understanding tacking properly), I don't see how having to manually zig-zag my ships in wind will be much fun at all. Micromanagement FTL.

[GuppyShark]

From what I have seen in the previews, the AI has not been improved very much. It still charges cavalry at squares, resulting in the reoccurence of the old "AI has fun watching its best troops getting impaled".

That's odd.

In the demo I found American cavalry moving around my right flank so I moved my rightmost unit into square - the US cav responded by dismounting and bayonet charging on foot.

[Thanas]

From what I have seen in the previews, the AI has not been improved very much. It still charges cavalry at squares, resulting in the reoccurence of the old "AI has fun watching its best troops getting impaled".

That's odd.

In the demo I found American cavalry moving around my right flank so I moved my rightmost unit into square - the US cav responded by dismounting and bayonet charging on foot.

*Shrug*
The thing happened in one of CA's previews on tactics, so it might very well be that the battle AI has been upgraded since then.

[Thanas]

Can anyone confirm the rumor that the data files are essentially non-accessible, therefore making modding impossible before someone programs an unpacker?

If so, I wonder how much more assholish CA can really get.

[ray245]

Can anyone confirm the rumor that the data files are essentially non-accessible, therefore making modding impossible before someone programs an unpacker?

If so, I wonder how much more assholish CA can really get.

From what I understand, an SDK will be released soon. Although many aspect of the game has been proven to be accessible to modders from the Demo alone.

[Vympel]

I've played multiple turns of my first campaign (as the Russian Empire, obviously) and I'm so far quite impressed with the improvements they've made to the strategic game, the much increased depth (but unfortunately, also micromanagement) of your provinces (they contain multiple towns where you can build certain things, not just your main city) and the overall quality of the information they provide you with, in a much more accessible fashion than previous games.

The tactical game is so far excellent - I have a pretty good system (unchanged from when I got it back in October 2006 apart from a video card upgrade late last year, thank God I got that) and I'm able to run everything on Ultra - with the exception of shadows which I've turned off completely because they look rubbish, as well as anti-aliasing (useless when you've got a 22 inch LCD).

However, I should add the caveat I've not engaged in any huge battles, so hopefully "Ultra" unit size isn't a mistake - most of the battles I've fought have involved about ~2,000 men (only a quarter of a stack, as far as Ultra is concerned).

(In the game's opinion, my recommended settings are high rather than Ultra).

Will keep all informed.

[Lazarus]

What the fuck is so difficult and annoying about fucking tacking for fuck's sake? It's basic sailing. Yes, true, most people are not at all familiar with sailing concepts, but then most people are also not familiar with the infantry tactics upon which the TW series is based. Removing tacking is like removing horses from land battles and just making all units move uniformly at the speed of cavalry instead.

Have you even played the naval demo? It's difficult to micromanage every ship as it is, and you want to make it MORE complex? Bollocks to OMGNOWINDZ=FAIL, fully realistic naval combat would be difficult to the point of impossible, and sure as hell wouldn't be remotely fun for anyone save massive sailing nerds.

[CaptHawkeye]

What the fuck is so difficult and annoying about fucking tacking for fuck's sake? It's basic sailing. Yes, true, most people are not at all familiar with sailing concepts, but then most people are also not familiar with the infantry tactics upon which the TW series is based. Removing tacking is like removing horses from land battles and just making all units move uniformly at the speed of cavalry instead.

Play the SES Jutland trial and then tell me what Empire is obviously lacking. Empire's ship controls are awful, period. Even a ridiculously broken sim like Jutland has better wide scale ship controls and that's just insulting. I can't believe it didn't occur to anybody at CA that formation wide controls were necessary. Commands as ridiculously simple as "Turn by Succession".

It also makes me fucking laugh that the ships only go to "points" on the map. So you can have a ship just stop in the middle of the ocean and get hammered and it's too fucking stupid to start moving again. God forbid it's the lead ship, because then it will disrupt the whole battle line.

[Beowulf]

The wind is pretty much the only terrain you'll find on the open sea. Otherwise you just have ships moving around on a flat plane. (note: I don't have Empire: Total War)

[CaptHawkeye]

Welcome to Naval Warfare?

I haven't gotten far into the game yet but it'll make me sad if the game doesn't model swells and bad weather. That being said, ships are nothing like conventional land based units. "Terrain" isn't as relevant as the units themselves and the grand scheme of the environment.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Have you even played the naval demo? It's difficult to micromanage every ship as it is, and you want to make it MORE complex? Bollocks to OMGNOWINDZ=FAIL, fully realistic naval combat would be difficult to the point of impossible, and sure as hell wouldn't be remotely fun for anyone save massive sailing nerds.

Bullshit. I jumped right into the naval demo, no tutorials, no nothing, a total deer-in-the-headlights fumbling noob stumbling around the interface like an idiot (the quality thereof notwithstanding) and got a Close Victory with damn near my eyes closed. Don't blame any illusion of overcomplexity and micromanagement on your own complete ignorance of the concepts at work.

And there is nothing "fully realistic" about the mere inclusion of tacking (and by extension, the effects of sailing close to the wind) - it's a total misrepresentation of the issue to claim I want anything even remotely approaching fully realistic. If I wanted a fully realistic sailing model I'd be demanding that ships' paths skew accordingly with the wind depending upon their point of sail and require that a calculator be on hand to correctly adjust for it on any course... that would be un-fun and overcomplicated.

It's not as if tacking is hard to do, nor is there anything which would demand that you must do it - it is only "necessary" (in a fully realistic sense) when you are sailing somewhere which is upwind of you. Any kind of reasonable, less-realistic sailing model suitable for a game such as this would make the simple concession of allowing you to sail directly upwind, just at vastly reduced performance, and making tacking the more efficient way to get upwind. Hell, a very simple AI command could have been implemented for something like Empire wherein you can click a button and the ship thusly automated will perform tacks on its own at intervals of the player's desire, thereby reducing some of the micromanagement required - not unlike the "fire at will" or "stand ground" toggles in land warfare.

Beowulf makes a good point about the wind being the only thing approaching "terrain" - without tacking (and again, by extension the effects of the wind in general, as the two are innately tied), you are having the land battle equivalent of just engaging on a flat, open field: No trees, no elevation, no rocks, no houses, no rivers. In other words, completely lacking in any tactical depth beyond just mindlessly throwing two armies at each other and seeing who comes out the other side intact.

EDIT: Clarification

[ray245]

Have you even played the naval demo? It's difficult to micromanage every ship as it is, and you want to make it MORE complex? Bollocks to OMGNOWINDZ=FAIL, fully realistic naval combat would be difficult to the point of impossible, and sure as hell wouldn't be remotely fun for anyone save massive sailing nerds.

Bullshit. I jumped right into the naval demo, no tutorials, no nothing, a total deer-in-the-headlights fumbling noob stumbling around the interface like an idiot (the quality thereof notwithstanding) and got a Close Victory with damn near my eyes closed. Don't blame any illusion of overcomplexity and micromanagement on your own complete ignorance of the concepts at work.

And there is nothing "fully realistic" about the mere inclusion of tacking (and by extension, the effects of sailing close to the wind) - it's a total misrepresentation of the issue to claim I want anything even remotely approaching fully realistic. If I wanted a fully realistic sailing model I'd be demanding that ships' paths skew accordingly with the wind depending upon their point of sail and require that a calculator be on hand to correctly adjust for it on any course... that would be un-fun and overcomplicated.

It's not as if tacking is hard to do, nor is there anything which would demand that you must do it - it is only "necessary" (in a fully realistic sense) when you are sailing somewhere which is upwind of you. Any kind of reasonable, less-realistic sailing model suitable for a game such as this would make the simple concession of allowing you to sail directly upwind, just at vastly reduced performance, and making tacking the more efficient way to get upwind. Hell, a very simple AI command could have been implemented for something like Empire wherein you can click a button and the ship thusly automated will perform tacks on its own at intervals of the player's desire, thereby reducing some of the micromanagement required - not unlike the "fire at will" or "stand ground" toggles in land warfare.

Beowulf makes a good point about the wind being the only thing approaching "terrain" - without tacking (and again, by extension the effects of the wind in general, as the two are innately tied), you are having the land battle equivalent of just engaging on a flat, open field: No trees, no elevation, no rocks, no houses, no rivers. In other words, completely lacking in any tactical depth beyond just mindlessly throwing two armies at each other and seeing who comes out the other side intact.

EDIT: Clarification

I have to wonder if the original code for Tacking is still in the game, if so, modders should be able to fix this issue.

Although you have to blame those beta-tester/idiots to begin with. I remember CA mentioning that tacking confuse and annoy the hell out of those beta-testers. Take that if you will. At the least CA fully understood the importance of tacking to begin with.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Of course it confuses and annoys - like tackling any other new concept and struggling up its learning curve. In Age of Sail naval warfare, it's relatively steep, so of course most people are not going to be able to effortlessly grasp it at first glance.

The same can be said for the earlier TWs and their tactical land battles. Understanding feudal Japanese, and classical and medieval European warfare is not something that comes intuitively. Grab a mook off the street and tell him to command the battle of Cannae and he'll probably fail even more dismally than the Romans did. Yet nobody who had prior experience with the series made any complaints when they played Cannae in R:TW. So why should it be such a surprise that new concepts introduced in a totally new facet of the game are seemingly difficult to manage?

[ray245]

Of course it confuses and annoys - like tackling any other new concept and struggling up its learning curve. In Age of Sail naval warfare, it's relatively steep, so of course most people are not going to be able to effortlessly grasp it at first glance.

The same can be said for the earlier TWs and their tactical land battles. Understanding feudal Japanese, and classical and medieval European warfare is not something that comes intuitively. Grab a mook off the street and tell him to command the battle of Cannae and he'll probably fail even more dismally than the Romans did. Yet nobody who had prior experience with the series made any complaints when they played Cannae in R:TW. So why should it be such a surprise that new concepts introduced in a totally new facet of the game are seemingly difficult to manage?

The things is looking at how people like Stark can dislike the game to some extend because of its steep learning curve, from a business perspective, CA has to cater to people like them.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

I had some downtime here at school so I ran the demo naval battle again to make sure the first run wasn't a total fluke (I don't have my full version on my laptop) - another Close Victory. It seems to be very hard to get anything more than that, given that I only lost a single 4th rate (which are floating crap anyway).

Of note is that I spent significant portions of the battle leaning back in my admiral's armchair just watching my line maneuver into position - micromanagement my ass. Select all, group 1, group formations, line. Voila. Only three times during the battle did I ever have to take direct command of an individual ship in the line to perform some little maneuver or unleash a good bow or stern rake, and most of the maneuvers were because one of my ships got split off from the main line and was not in a good position to rejoin it immediately, and were instead maneuvered for potshots at French sterns while the line lumbered into place.

I did notice that the wind had slightly more effect than I first thought, which is good - my 2nd rate got split off downwind of the battle and had to crawl upwind to rejoin, which was appropriately laborious.

[Darth Wong]

It's not hard to win that demo battle. I won too, but it was ugly. My ships were totally disorganized. That's why I concluded that I have no business commanding sailing ships

PS. It seems way too easy to sink an enemy ship. At no point does it even explain how repeated volleys above-water will suddenly make the enemy ship sink like a stone.

[Ubiquitous]

Is there any reason why this game seems to be more expensive than other PC games released recently? It was the same price as Killzone 2 in my local GAME store.

[Darth Tanner]

Is there any reason why this game seems to be more expensive than other PC games released recently? It was the same price as Killzone 2 in my local GAME store.

Greed? Its gone down to £23 on amazon which is pretty cheap for a new release. Obviously its still £40 on steam. I would recommend not buying it for several weeks however, its simply not working for thousands of people at the moment because of the incompetence of Steam.